


fiberoptics

by feralphoenix



Category: Brafman
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was almost funny, how cold and insignificant narrow-eyed smiles and a voice saying <i>son #2</i> seemed in the light of this place. They seemed to fade with each mouthful of ground beef and almost-too-spicy spaghetti sauce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fiberoptics

**Author's Note:**

> _(Love and fear in a house)_
> 
> "It looks like the blue is falling down out of the sky and the blue is flying up out of the sea and everything is upside down and different but absolutely the same and right."  
>           ( - Zoë Klein, _Drawing in the Dust_ )

“Yeah, but what’s the meaning in actually making dinner first?”

Akane frowned. “It’s not like this is like a real operation, though, isn’t it? It’s not like Gou-kun isn’t allowed to eat for so many hours beforehand—right, Tsugumi-chan?”

Tsugumi made the same all-purpose noncommittal filler noise she’d always fallen back on while distracted or thinking. It was a little relaxing to hear. It was cute, after all. His dad’s assumption seemed to have been that Tsugumi would outgrow making noises, but she hadn’t, at least not yet.

“And besides, Tsugumi-chan still needs time to get ready, let alone figure out what’s wrong so that she can fix it,” Akane went on. “And _besides_ besides, Gou-kun and Naruse-san have never had the chance to eat your cooking yet!”

“What a pain in the ass,” Oriha said.

_“Oru-chan,”_ Akane said, and stared at her. Slowly, the gaze of every other person in the room settled on Oriha. Even Tsugumi looked up from her laptop. Oriha scratched her head.

“Then Kaya, you’re helping,” Oriha announced. “Since we’ve got… nine entire people to feed. I am not making nine people’s worth of spaghetti on my own.”

Kaya closed her eyes and bowed her head once, and stood up.

 

 

Gou watched the girls in their aprons banging around in the kitchen. The leftover middle school kids were busy bickering; Rin, cat in her lap, was watching Tsugumi program over the girl’s shoulder. Mei, on Tsugumi’s other side, lounged over the sofa’s armest with his hand on the side of his face and his eyes unwaveringly glued to Gou.

It was impossible to tell what Mei was thinking, but then Gou had never really been able to read his brother. To read people other than Rin and Tsugumi, honestly, but Mei least of all. Even now that all the misunderstandings had fallen away, even now Mei—and Gou, too—knew the truth, it still felt like Mei’s eyes were filled with enmity.

Not like Gou could really blame him much, now. The backdoor programs and the remote control system were disabled, but they still existed, like poisons in the wire guts that made up the Nirvana engine. Twenty-four hours from now, he would be back to some unpredictable _thing,_ a liability and a pawn.

“Gou-kun,” Akane said from beside him. Gou turned. She was smiling. “When’s the last time that you had dinner over at a friend’s house?”

He flashed briefly back to dinner tables at the Nogisaka labs. He hadn’t even had a meal with the whole family together for years. Their father had kept them awake until all hours, only letting Gou and Tsugumi eat freeze-dried soup boiled on the Bunsen burner like stereotypical scientists when their uncle had reminded him that kids needed fuel to grow.

“I don’t even remember,” he told her honestly.

“Oh,” Akane said, and even though she didn’t stop smiling, her eyebrows knitted. “Well, I hope we’re not too noisy.”

Gou looked at Mei. He looked at Oriha and Kaya cooking, at Oriha’s brother and his classmate. He looked back at Mei. He remembered his twin’s insistence that this place—these people, and not his own blood family—was the home he needed to protect.

“You’re not at all,” Gou said at last. “It’s nice.”

 

 

It was almost funny, how cold and insignificant narrow-eyed smiles and a voice saying _son #2_ seemed in the light of this place. They seemed to fade with each mouthful of ground beef and almost-too-spicy spaghetti sauce.

Despite the sweet smells in the kitchen, Gou had been worried that nervousness would keep him from doing his duty as a guest and cleaning his plate. But it was so delicious that he ate a whole serving and a half before he realized that his murky feelings were fading.

 

 

Gou lay stretched out on the floor with Akane holding his left hand and Rin holding his right. Tsugumi had initially sat at his feet, but scooched up instead to one side of his knees, explaining that he had gotten too tall and she needed to be closer. Oriha, Kazuha, and Midori looked down at him from their seats on various pieces of furniture. The only noise was of Kaya washing dishes in the other room. Oriha had tried to get her brother and his friend to help her, but had been overruled when Akane weighed in on Midori’s side in barbed references to how awful it felt to be left out all the time.

Gou remembered lying on the operation table as a kid. Faith in his father had wiped out all traces of nervousness then. Faith in Tsugumi was doing the trick now, more or less. Mei would be next, if this were a success for Gou: he was less at risk to begin with, having been separated from the family for so long. After him, Rin, who should not be carrying the remote control system anyway.

Believing in the wrong people had gotten him into this, but as a scientist—as a brother—he still thought that it was better to believe and to be betrayed than to do any betraying himself.

“Hey,” Mei said. Gou tilted his chin up to look at his brother, seated behind him in his blind spot.

“Nii-san?”

“You’re gonna be fine,” Mei said. He scratched at his cheek, still looking irritated. “All the bad shit that’s been put into you, that’s dead and buried as of tonight.”

Gou bit back the urge to smile. “I know,” he said. “Tsugumi knows what she’s doing.”

“You’re not going home, either,” Mei said. His scowl deepened. “The old fucker’s not getting his hands on you again.”

“Where’s home?” Gou said dryly, and the corner of Mei’s mouth twitched almost like his brother, too, was trying not to smile.

“Gou.”

He tilted his chin back down. Tsugumi was looking straight at him. Just that—just her eyes meeting his, after nearly a year of her hiding at the sight of him—made him feel at ease.

“Look into the light,” she said, and held up her computer. There was a flash of red, and nothing more.

 

 

_Gou’s brain replayed a memory of a black-haired girl smiling at him under a night sky._

_“You said ‘everyone’ hates you, but that’s not true! I don’t hate you at all.”_

_The heat gathering under the front of his skull felt like the heat in his face created by those words._


End file.
